How to spot dating webpagina scammers on OkCupid and Tinder

Be careful: Some people on dating sites aren’t looking for love. Flickr/Sharon & Nikki McCutcheon

If you’ve used a dating webpagina or app like OkCupid or Tinder, you’ll have noticed the hundreds of fake profiles that exist on the sites, seemingly designed to make you arm overheen your profile to scammers.

Dating sites are, gratefully, getting better at spotting who is using their service to send thousands of spam messages. It’s pretty effortless to tell: They send the same message overheen and overheen, often with the same verbinding.

But there’s a type of dating webpagina scam that’s far trickier to spot, and the people who operate it optie to be making thousands of dollars every month fooling pasivo fellows.

Business Insider obtained a PDF guide that is sold online for just ВЈ2.59. It details how scammers operate fake dating webpagina profiles ter order to con guys out of money. The guide isn’t available for free, te fact, it wasgoed being sold for Bitcoins on a deep web marketplace. Bitcoin is cryptographic currency favoured by criminals spil it permits semi-anonymous online transactions.

It’s not just guns and drugs that are up for sale on deep web sites. Vendors also list guides on how to commit other illegal activities. The documents are often sold for petite amounts of money, but the price barrier, the need to pay with Bitcoin, and the fact that they’re only available on the deep web prevents the guides from being circulated widely.

A copy of the dating webpagina scam guide being sold on the Crypto Market deep web webpagina Crypto Market

The document, titled Adhrann’s Updated Dating Scam 2014, lays out a method for creating fake dating webpagina profiles, ensnaring dudes ter conversation, and then pressuring them to send money. The author claims that someone who operates the scam can earn up to $15,000 (ВЈ9,700) every month if they operate the dating scam full-time.

Here’s the overview of Adhrann’s scamming guide:

Adhrann advises people following his guide to take care te the way they set up their dating webpagina profile. They should have a burner phone, he says (a disposable phone that can be used for makeshift tasks and then discarded). Potential scammers are also advised to use supuesto private networks and proxy services, both of which can help hide the scammer’s efectivo IP address and location ter case law enforcement get involved.

So how do you know if someone is attempting to scam you? Well, very first of all, Adhrann suggests that readers look for certain types of guys: “40-60, technical or financial formation (IT, analyst, registeraccountant, consultant, engineer, etc), lonely, or still living with parents, poor social/conversational abilities, timid, a bit weird, nerd type, etc.” So if that sounds like you, stay voorzichtig.

Another way to spot whether an account is fake is the selection of photos that it uses. Adhrann’s guide says that scammers should “look on the Internet for a bunch of pics of a lovely damsel” and select someone who is “not a top monster, but a común sexy chick.” To find photos, scammers can buy sets of photographs of youthful women, often through shady forums frequented by hackers.

This screenshot shows a user of a hacker forum being advised that a quick way to find sets of photos is to automatically download them from Facebook:

Even before a scammer messages you, you can spot they’re fake by checking their photos. Performing a Google photo search for an account’s profile picture will showcase you where on the internet the photo emerges – sometimes you’ll see it affixed to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts with various different names. That’s a sure sign that the account is fake, spil the photo voorwaarde have bot circulating on the internet.

Step two te the dating scam guide deals with “developing a supuesto relationship.” Scammers are told to ask lots of questions about their targets, paying particular attention to their past relationships. They are then instructed to take the information learned, and then create the “volmaakt woman” for the target.

Adhrann says that scammers should “emphasize on you being te a difficult financial situation, yet DO NOT insist on that, but treat this subject like you have bot much better ter the past, and truly ashamed now, [spil you are] not used to being poor.”

Step three is where things begin getting indeed interesting. It’s called the “cashing out” stage, and it’s where scammers commence to ask for money. Up until now, scammers were instructed to turn down any requests for a Skype call, but if the target insists, then they should ask him to pay for a webcam. Scammers are told to use a female playmate for the movie call part of the process, but there are guidelines on what they should look like:

If a scammer is successful here, and managed to con the target out of money for a webcam, or other puny amounts, then they may attempt the riskiest part of the process, known spil the “pause.”

Scammers are instructed to stage an quarrel overheen webcam, and then cease voeling.

After a week, scammers are told to call the target and voorkeur that their “hubby/father/pimp/whoever” got “toasted/high/whatever” and attacked them. Then they will ask the target for thousands of dollars te order to run away and escape forever. That’s the final step, spil the scammers leave with thousands of dollars, and the storyline has finished.

If you want to avoid dating webpagina scammers, here are some basic tips to go after:

Don’t give money to people on dating sites.

Check their photos to see if they stole them from someone else.

Be skeptical about the people you talk to. Does their story remain consistent and make sense?

Are they asking too many questions about your life? Ordinario conversation is fine, but see out for someone attempting to build a profile of your past.